


Unbearable Without You

by cosmickirk



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Blair being a bitch w/ sensitive-ass feelings, Chuck comforting the shit out of her, F/M, Pre-Series, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 19:50:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3822700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmickirk/pseuds/cosmickirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short little story about a broken girl and her prince.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unbearable Without You

At the centre of the dance floor is Serena, of course, with her golden locks, her golden dress (her stupid golden life). She laughs and all the boys turn their heads to see what is so funny. They flock to her unwittingly, cocking their heads to catch every one of her words, and she doesn’t even notice. _They_ don’t even notice.

This is how it’s always been, dull and colourless in Serena’s enormous shadow, but with a tightening of her jaw and a shift in the muscles of her fingers, Blair decides that that is not how it always will be.

+++

The opportunity presents itself in autumn when everything simultaneously and publicly falls apart. Her father, supposedly always there for her, flees the country with his younger boyfriend; she is in the bathroom more often than ever, binging and purging her small body ruthlessly; Nate slowly detaches himself from her in a process infinitely more tortuous than just breaking it off cleanly; and Serena disappears without even the semblance of a goodbye, leaving her truly alone on the bathroom floor, alone at Constance. Alone, alone, alone.

Blair wallows for precisely three weeks. The scandal runs its course, her mother _tries_ to put a cork in her midnight sobs, Nate halfway returns to his normal, oblivious self, and she can pretend to enjoy eating again.

Three weeks, and she commands herself to cut it out.

Constance needs a queen to guide hapless wannabes to at least an imitation of style, and as she stands at her closet, pulling out pinstripe button downs and crisp navy blazers, she decides that it must be her.

Everyone else was just playing for second. Keeping her seat warm.

With a thoughtful tilt of her head, she selects the perfect velvety flats and an impeccable pleated skirt. Her hair goes up, side-parted and seamless, into a tidy chignon. She applies her makeup in smooth, sure strokes, but it is the moment that she nestles a scarlet headband into her hair, it is precisely within that small movement, and not a second before, that her spine straightens itself out resolutely, her coffee-stain eyes harden into rocks, and she decides that this is the beginning of an era.

The Waldorf dynasty, if you will.

Blair marches through Constance and people whisper as she passes but she does not even look at them, leaves generous room between herself and the masses not out of shame, but her colossal superiority. At lunch she perches herself on the steps of the Met, legs tightly crossed and chin raised defiantly.

 _Sit here._ She demands. _I dare you._

A gaggle of wide-eyed imitators gather around, seated at least one step beneath her out of respect, or fear, or a dangerous mixture of the two. They ask Blair for opinions, for guidance, they don’t flinch away from her withering gaze or cower from her condescending nature. She will lead them because of it, and they stare at her with wonder.

 _This,_ she thinks with a smile, _is how it’s meant to be._

Serena was but a distant memory.

                                                                            +++                                                                                                

Becoming queen is laughably easy. Blair relishes the power, the ease of dictating what is acceptable in the Constance kingdom and what will have you exiled. Girls quiver if she so much as frowns at them, they follow her without a thought and practically beg to do her dirty work. It may not be the universal love Serena enjoys, but this universal fear achieves precisely the same end. And that suits her like a dream.

“I have to say, Waldorf, power becomes you.” Chuck whispers into Blair’s ear one day as she sends Emily Rockefeller home in tears for wearing tights as pants.

She turns to face him with the barest civility. “What do you want?”

“What are you offering?” he asks, smirking at her arrogantly (the only way he knows how).

She scoffs, “Go hang yourself with that hideous scarf.”

Her minions cover their mouths to stifle laughs.

“Girls, we’re going.” she snaps. With a prim tightening of her lips, she eyes Chuck up and down, unappreciative of what she finds. “I didn’t know the Met let in dogs.”

They leave for Constance in a giggling, designer-clad flurry of vapidity. Blair throws a glance over her shoulder in the middle of a laugh Chuck can tell is fake. If he looked a second later he would have missed the helpless downturn of her lips.

_I’m sorry._

+++

He smiles when he sees her, in spite of their lunchtime incident, and goes to the bar to pour her a deserved drink. (People think being queen has given her life, but Chuck knows it does nothing but erode. That nervous twitch in her hands has come back, shadows hug her eyes, and the faint smell of bile clings to her breath. Sometimes he wonders how nobody else notices these things about her that to him are so glaringly obvious). She enters his apartment in her dark Burberry coat.

“Earlier today,” he greets her with his appropriate level of impropriety, “I wasn’t lying when I said that I find your newfound authority… very sexy.” he hasn't looked at her yet, oblivious. He gazes at the skyline of Manhattan beyond his window, slowly blinking into illumination as the sun sets across the river.

“I broke up with Nate.” she says without warning.

Chuck stops dead in his tracks. With the nagging feeling that he must have misheard, he turns away from the bar and the skyline to stare at her.

“Don’t look so surprised; I’m a cold-hearted queen, after all." she says with a small, helpless shrug, "And besides, this has been a long time coming.” a sudden crack in her voice, a defeated slump of her shoulders, “He’s never wanted me the way he wants Serena, which I guess everyone saw except me. Huh,” she almost laughs, and the sound hits him hard, “Like everything else in my life, Blair and Nate didn’t turn out to be quite what I had imagined.”

She is so exhausted.

Chuck opens his arms without a word _._ Suddenly there is nothing between them but a few feet of the Palace’s glossy floor, and the realization hits them both simultaneously, with equal fear and elation.

These few feet mean everything.

She crosses them in small steps and falls against him, somewhere deep inside her knowing this is exactly what she needs. _He_ is what she needs. But everything is still in shambles. Chuck feels a single spasm of a sob against his chest but pretends that he doesn’t.

“I can’t believe this is happening.” she cries into his shoulder. “Everything is so screwed up.” _Except us. (Especially us.)_

He kisses the top of her head gently, closes his eyes against the whirlwind threatening to blow them both sideways, and releases a soft sigh. “I know.”

“I don’t have Serena, I don’t have Nate; I don’t even have my own parents. I have nobody left on my side.”

“You have your minions.”

She hits him lightly on the chest and he chuckles.

“You have me.”

She lifts her head, raising a quizzical brow half out of real surprise and half to hear more.

“You’ll _always_ have me, Blair.” 

There is something different in his eyes that not even the strongest scotch could induce, something that softens them into shining copper pennies and makes Blair marvel. “Thank you.” she whispers, nestling her head back against his chest, too scared to say the _other_ thing.

“For Blair Waldorf?" he says, his voice easing away from earnest and settling back into that comfortably teasing rhythm they know so well, "Anything.”

She might have called him a romantic, but that would call attention to the other thing, the dangerous thing they wouldn’t say, so instead she pulls him away from the bar and takes off her shoes. Those words are a Rubicon they will cross another day.

+++

The next morning she wakes up to the sound of him softly snoring, his mouth hanging open as if in smile.

 _(I_ do not _snore, Waldorf. Yes you do, and I have the proof on my phone - just look. For the sake of my reputation, delete that. In your dreams, Bass, your snore-y, snore-y dreams.)_

Asleep, his grimy smirk is gone, his jaw is slack, and he looks innocent as a child. Blair wonders if maybe this is what he looked like before he was crushed, intoxicated, shoved into a salacious life that was not really  _him._ It seems he has always had sad eyes and too big a weight on his shoulders. She runs a finger across her own lips, her mouth forming the words that neither of them will say and wondering how it would feel to just tell him. She mouths them over and over;  _I love you, Chuck Bass. I love you, I love you, I love you. I love how you walk like the Earth is yours and how you use your playboy image to hide a scared little boy and I know you don't understand how to be loved but I can show you, because I love you so much it makes my chest ache and I know you feel the same._ In a moment of recklessness she considers shaking Chuck awake right then and there and telling him, but stops herself in the same instant.

They are curled together, his head soft against the nape of her neck and her leg slung over his to bring him closer. She is clutching his hand against her cheek, and their fingers are entwined in desperate moonlight promise.

Nothing happened the night before, but she is dripping in his cologne regardless.

She kisses him on the cheek and quietly gathers her things, leaving a perfectly timed pot of coffee to boil because she knows Chuck wakes up exactly ten minutes after she does

Casting a final look at his peaceful, sleeping figure, she leaves the apartment, locking the door behind her with a solid, impassable _click_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feedback is always super appreciated :))) This pairing makes me cry so much excuse the messy writing style I'm emotional.


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